Monday, July 27, 2015

Phelan Tierney, the well-named
hero of David Corbett’s excellently written new thriller The Mercy of the Night, is a new variation on the contemporary genre
hero: one who’s more like a social worker.

Tierney, a civil attorney, is disbarred for
slugging one of his clients for disparaging his terminally ill wife. After his
wife dies, he seeks to ease his pain by volunteering as a GED tutor at a
halfway house for former prostitutes, girls and women who are struggling their
way into the mainstream of life, many of them for the first time. (Corbett’s
knowledge of mourning is both wide and deep, captured with ghostly poignancy.)

Tierney finds
a bookend to his trauma in a former teenage prostitute named Jacqui Garza. An
outcast among the outcasts, Jacqui’s life has been more harrowed by trauma than
most: ten years before the story begins, she was kidnapped by a serial child murderer
but, unlike his other victims, escaped to help send the villain away for life.

So
Jacqui—the most real and interesting character here—survived, but for what?
While most street girls are estranged from their families, Jacqui remains all
too close to hers. Their criminal roots claw at her ankles. What most of us
think of as normal life is alien country for her.

The
halfway house is nowhere near far away enough from those ugly roots. Its
emotional demands are crude and unbearable. Everyday life compels us to keep
secrets. At a halfway house secrets are strictly forbidden. Further, Jacqui is
a reactive, reflexively cynical, angry, impulsive woman, operating almost purely on instinct. She’s also selfish and
deluded. She gets the idea she can heal her pain by a change of scenery, namely
a beach in Mexico. So she flees the house, hitting the streets again, in
pursuit of a vague dream

Jacqui’s muddle
of bad luck and poor decision-making lead her far away from Mexico and into new
danger when one of her tricks is murdered before her eyes, soon after he
proposes that they run away together to Visalia. She knows him as “Fireman
Mike” while the rest of the city of Rio Vista knows him as a man important, powerful
and corrupt. (Bay Area readers will recognize the town as based in part on the
North Bay city of Vallejo.)

Now
everyone is after her: Some want to save her life; others are eager to end it.

Like other
Corbett novels I’ve read, this is a beautifully, lovingly written novel, a
smooth blend of suspense and tenderness, action and keen observation, not only
on the bitter path of grief, but also on the collapse of a 21st-century
city and how its impact its citizens. It moves adeptly from the small and
personal to the epic.

Jacqui
Garza is a pip: a vivid portrait of a girl at torn ends. The novel inhabits her
knee-jerk nihilism without becoming devoured by it. (She’s also a cousin to
Roque Montalvo, the young hero of Corbett’s superb Do They Know I’m Running? a hemisphere-trotting epic from 2010, a
novel I loved for its broad sweep, bright hard colors and keen-eyed adventure.)

As Phelan
Tierney tries to track Jacqui down to save her both from herself and the wolves
on her trail, there’s another dog in the hunt—Skellenger (yet another cool name),
a compromised homicide detective. He’s not as cold-hearted as you might suspect,
but his steely pragmatism has sullied his integrity and put his career at risk.
He and Jacqui share a mysterious history. And while they only meet in
flashback, until the end, I sensed their shadows wandering near each other.
They make worthy adversaries who might cross paths again someday.

The Mercy of the Night takes place in a smaller landscape
than Do They Know I’m Running? I must admit, it took awhile for it to
gain traction with me. Phelan Tierney seems too nice a guy--so full of
tenderness and compassion, so self-effacing, that he lacks a bit of sand.

Beyond an
occasional naiveté regarding the underworld, Tierney’s human flaws don’t seem
particularly compelling. That client he punched out? He had it coming, regardless
what the California Bar decrees. When Jacqui accuses him of exploiting her as a
personal recovery project, I thought, “Well, what’s wrong with that?”

One thing
I’ve noticed about grief is how the grief-stricken often feel a bitter
resentment at how the rest of the world goes on, seemingly without them. I
wanted Tierney to snap, to lash out more.

You’d
definitely want to take Tierney home to meet Mom, and even date your sister,
but put him in the shark-infested waters of a suspense novel an avatar of
PC-male virtue, with the surrounding characters shining more brightly.

FINDING
“MERCY”

David
Corbett’s novel took me over three weeks to track down in its analog trade
paperback after it came out. (Corbett is one of those few writers whose new
work I try always to read in paper. Even Herman Melville and Jack London get
the digital read with me.) Three weeks I spent wandering from bookstore to
bookstore, placing orders, being told “Sorry chum. Distributor sez not
available.”

David
Corbett is a major writer. Since his 2002 debut, every novel he’s published has
been greeted by bright, well-deserved fireworks.

Not this
time though. I saw Mercy of the Night
on the shelf of the library where I work, but still have yet to see it on any
bookstore shelf anywhere, even in the Bay Area.

Along the
way, I noted it was published not by Ballantine, as Corbett’s previous novels
were, but by a company I’d never heard of: Thomas & Mercer, located in
Seattle. A web search revealed Thomas & Mercer to be a division of Amazon.
Meaning, among other things, Mercy of the
Night is only available within the Amazon universe, from where I finally
ordered it.

(And
then, as the drone flew away, I opened fire on it and sent it crashing to the
ground in a delightful burst of flames to cheers from the entire neighborhood …
JUST KIDDING!)

(I later found out that it may have been a problem between the particular bookstore I approached and the specific warehouse it ordered from. Maybe I should have dug deeper, but given that Corbett is also a noted Bay Area writer as well, I expected--and he deserves--greater visibility than I saw.)

But this is
not yet another attack on Amazon, but more of reflection on the state on the
mindful literate genre fiction that David and I both write and advocate for.

LOST
AMONG THE BOUNCING ATOMS

Someday, genre
masters such as John le Carré, Peter Straub, Martin Cruz Smith and others
veterans who can still be found on the lists of the Big Five, will pass into
the Great Shade. And when that happens, it’s highly doubtful the Big Five will
replace them. The “New Economy” that sprung up in the last twenty years won’t
allow for it.

Publishing
used to be an industry of low margins, where say, Danielle Steele’s profits
would pay for the publication of "mid-listers” like Donald Westlake, and others
who were writing much more interesting, strange and exciting books.

“That
window is closing,” David during a talk he gave a few years back. Sure, the smart readers are
still there and still willing to pay for something different, something more than the
routine helter-skelter, something more like literature, the kind of novels you
can read again and experience anew.

But the high
profits now demanded by various parties in the industry are too high to cater to them: like,
say, Thoroughbred racing, discriminating readers and the authors who seek them
are “niche” to the world’s big players.

So
Danielle Steele pays for more Danielle Steele. J.K. Rowling pays for her
imitators—most of whom are expected to hit a best-seller home run on their very
first effort and if not, there’s not even a minor league to get sent down to. (One
story has novelist George Pelecanos being sent to this Outer Darkness by his
publisher for selling “only” 40,000 copies of a novel.)

There’s
only independent DIY publishers, like my own Ambler House, and a few small brave outfits like
Subterranean Press, who can only handle a few authors. For new genre writers,
or those trying something different, there are few doors to knock on.

Publishers
once, good and bad, right and wrong, served as gatekeepers. Now that most of
them have been kicked out or swallowed by the Whale, leaving only the Whales.
The rest of us have to go DIY.

It’s a
new world all right, but where is all this glory promised? Serious writers and
serious readers of genre fiction are being shunted to the side.

Yeah, I
guess it’s “freedom.” But it feels like a different kind of tyranny to me. I’m
not the first to point out that Web 2.0 is not leading to increased freedom
for everyone, but freedom only for the ruthless, the unrepentant, and the merely
lucky.

With a
million writers publishing on their own, there’s not much point in searching
among the bytes in the hope of finding a book I can even call “well-crafted.”
Why should I, or anyone with a modicum of taste, have to read fifty or a
hundred unreadable e-books to find even a halfway decent one?

Life’s
too short. And getting shorter.

IN THE
SCRATCHED CRYSTAL BALL

Outside
of horse racing, I’m terrible at predicting the future. (“Ten bucks says they
put George W. Bush on Mount Rushmore!”) Still, I wish to venture a small vision
for the future of literate genre fiction, and that’s the possible reemergence
of the old paperback houses, such as Bantam, Dell, Fawcett, and Gold Medal,
where Westlake, Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford and others got their start. This time in the guise of e-publishers.

That’s
what professional publishers are for, to take the time and money to pick among
the garbage, to find the nuggets in the muck. And once the lump is shined up, do
all the rest of the work that, to be honest, most good writers are incapable
of doing for reasons of time, expense, and ability. (I’m a good writer but my
marketing skills are only okay, and I couldn’t distribute a box of used books
at a low-grade second-hand store.)

Here’s
where I predict evolution may kick in; that a new breed of publisher evolves to
fill the vacuum left behind by the old. E-books are the new paperbacks now. I’d
like to think that the e-book distributors, among them Bookbaby and Smashwords,
could evolve into more active and involved companies that the old houses used
to play.

Bookbaby
(my distributor of choice) seems to be evolving in this direction with
various services, (though their pricing framework needs improvement.) Amazon,
whatever we think of them, is also showing the way with their Thomas &
Mercer imprint.

There are
too many books in this short life. Someone needs to sort through them for the
rest of us. Readers and writers could both use a little mercy.

[Updated 7/30/15 to include new information about book distribution issues, and miscellaneous corrections.]

Copyright 2015 by Thomas
Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield’s latest
novel Butchertown, a ripping, 1920s gangster
shoot-‘em-up, will appear later this year. He is also the author of the
contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark, winner of the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book
festival awards for horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original
screenplays Whackers and The Uglies (e-book editions only).
Published by Ambler
House Publishing, those three are available at Amazon
in various editions. You can also find his work at Barnes
and Noble, Powell's
Books, and Scribed. He also “friends” on Facebook, tweets on Twitter,
reads at Goodreads and drinks at various bars around the East Bay. You can also
join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.He lives in Northern
California with his wife, Elizabeth.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Behind the high, ivy-covered walls
of the Burchfield Estate in Oakland, California, the Lord and Lady of the Manor
spend many an evening huddled before a warm TV, watching British mystery series,
mostly on PBS, some on BBCA. (They’re also available for streaming on Roku,
through Acorn, but we haven’t snipped the cable yet, mostly because the
servants object. And with good help so hard to find these days, well . . . .)

Among our favorites—and there are
a fair number--is Midsomer Murders. Based on a series of novels by Caroline
Graham, it’s not the crème de la pinnacle of its genre (an honor I bestow upon Prime Suspect, Foyle’s War, Sherlock! and Poirot et al). But it rates high as a
most companionable and genial program, with John Nettles (Ret.) playing a droll
Sheriff Andy to a bizarre population of kinky eccentrics and village nutcases.
It’s perverse waltz theme, featuring the Theremin, makes a fine ear worm.

We like Midsomer for choosing sharp, polished fun over tortured profundity,
making it a relative rarity in 21st Century cable TV’s savage, despairing
environment. (I can watch Sam Peckinpah’s original Straw Dogs--also set in rural
England--again anytime I want to despair over the human condition.)

Though ostensibly contemporary
(cell phones abound), Midsomer cheerily
wanders a never-never land of rural English villages, woodlands and fields, all
nested in the titular bucolic county.

Peaceful as it appears though, Midsomer
County has what seems the highest homicide rate per population on Earth. Underneath
all that chipper bourgeois Winnnie-the-Pooh gentility bubbles a bloody cauldron
of homicidal mania. The English can’t stop killing! Any good-hearted, innocent
wide-eyed American who dares to tread its green sward is bound to return in a
pine box (as I might as I am in the planning stages of journey there in a
couple of years. I am so glad I have cable!)

The blame for England’s descent
into genteel slaughter though, lies not with Midsomer Murders itself, but with its ancestral inspiration: the
stories and novels of Agatha Christie, still the best-selling author in the
world nearly forty years after her passing, and the Queen of the so-called Golden
Age of Mystery.

While paying due tribute to the
founders of detective fiction, Poe, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle and G.K.
Chesterton, The Golden Age storybegins in the 1920s. That was when the
painfully shy Ms. Christie, then an upper-middle-class housewife, published her
first novel, The Mysterious Affair at
Styles, which introduced one of literature’s most endearing oddballs,
Hercule Poirot.

Mystery fiction already had monuments
left by Doyle and Chesterton, but thanks to Christie’s deft plotting and the
imaginative characterization of her heroes (especially Poirot), the genre’s
popularity ballooned to phenomenon. Her success inspired near-countless other
writers to try their hand, among them Dorothy L. Sayers.

Eventually, in 1930, a group of
them living in London, co-led by Sayers, united to form The Detection Club,
electing G.K. Chesterton as their first president. This happened, in part, to
help promote the work of members; form a united front against greedy scheming publishers;
but, mostly to provide an excuse to socialize. They held their own cheeky,
flamboyant bizarre initiation ritual, complete with robes, candles, murder
weapons, and a skull grinning from a velvet cushion, all topped with a grandly solemn
oath. They often collaborated on novels, stories, and radio scripts in
round-robin fashion.

They were truly like characters
out of their own books, as odd and fascinating as the tales they imagined.
Their private lives concealed their own mysteries and scandals.

Sayers had a child out of wedlock
whose existence she never fully acknowledged (in keeping with the strict mores
of the day). And Christie pulled a sensational vanishing act in 1926, for
reasons that remain foggy. Other writers wove their secret fantasies of murder and
adulterous misbehavior into their stories, engaging in a level of
meta-gamesmanship, perhaps equal to Vladimir Nabokov in daring and cleverness,
if not in style and vision. (Nabokov, sad to say, was too much a snob, for he
could have well thumped these writers at their own game playing. What a book that would have been!)

They all thought nothing of
cheerfully peeling their plotlines right out of the day’s headlines, imagining
solutions to many a famous and unsolved murder. But they were not a callous
bunch. Some critics theorize that many of them were subconsciously dealing with
the trauma of World War I, in which many served.

Christie and Sayers are among the
few Detection Club members who are read widely today. Some of the other noted
names were A.A. Milne and, later, Eric
Ambler.

Others are now forgotten, some
undeservedly. Among those, John Dickson Carr, an American, was master of the
“locked room” mystery (and author of a sinfully enjoyable non-mystery, the
time-travel historical romp, The Devil in
Velvet).

Then there is Michael Innes, who
helped develop the “Oxford Don” mystery. Innes wrote fine prose with a razor
wit and a flair for wild n’ wooly action climaxes. His influence can be gleaned
in the series featuring Inspectors Morse
and Lewis.

Despite their reputation for upper-class
twittery, Golden Age writers often adeptly captured their era, the years
between the wars. Nor were they all reactionary Tories. Their viewpoints ran
from left to right and up and down the class system. Some even sounded early
alarms about Nazism while inveighing against both Communism and Capitalism. The
Detection Club drew members from near and far, among them New Zealand’s Ngaio
Marsh and the American Carr.

The Detection Club is still active,
with author Edwards as a member and first club archivist. His research has
borne good fruit here. But if you want to join the club yourself, good luck on even
finding a web page. It’s invitation only. Some things really should remain a
mystery, hidden in locked rooms for good.

Copyright 2015 by Thomas
Burchfield

Photo by author

Thomas Burchfield’s latest
(yet to be published) novel is Butchertown,
a ripping, 1920s gangster shoot-‘em-up. He is also the author of the
contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark, winner of the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book
festival awards for horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original screenplays
Whackers and The Uglies (e-book editions only). Published by Ambler House Publishing,
those three are available at Amazon
in various editions. You can also find his work at Barnes
and Noble, Powell's
Books, and Scribed. He also “friends” on Facebook, tweets on Twitter,
reads at Goodreads and drinks at various bars around the East Bay. You can also
join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.He lives in Northern
California with his wife, Elizabeth.